A Match Made for Murder Iona Whishaw (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

reached into her purse and pulled something out. “This has your honeymoon picture, do you remember? I was going to keep the rest to hold over Paul if he ever found me. But perhaps someone here can use them.” She dropped a roll of film into Lane’s hand and started up the steps slowly and then looked back once more. “Thank you. I have a son, you know. I never told you. Perhaps now I will be able to see him.”

“I’ve put my address in Canada in your handbag. Please write and let me know how you’re getting on,” Lane said, but Priscilla Galloway was already facing away from her, climbing the stairs painfully to whatever future she could make for herself. Lane stayed and watched the plane take off and make a great arc, flying south and then around and away toward the northeast. She thought about Priscilla, delicate and frail, sitting in the plane with her dark glasses on, perhaps thinking of the son she’d left behind somewhere. She is the most solitary figure in the world, Lane thought. She looked at the roll of film in her hand and slipped it into her handbag. What had she meant about holding something over Galloway?

“Raúl, I don’t know how to thank you. It was such an enormous thing to ask of you.”

Raúl shrugged genially. “It is nothing, ma’am. I hate to see a woman in that position. Anyway, my sister Chela thinks the world of you. She said most of the guests treat her as if she doesn’t exist, or they talk loudly to her because they think she won’t understand them. The management likes to keep the help strictly out of sight, if you know what I mean. You made a big impression on her.”

“We have something in common, as it turns out. We both saw one of the guests meeting a man in secret, so we had something to talk about right away.”

“Listen, when you work at a swanky place like that, you see lots of stuff. She knows her job. Clean up and see nothing.” Raúl smiled. “She lives near, so I hear about most things. But she’s a good girl; she knows not to get involved. You know, she said that same guest was meeting two different men. The last time, yesterday or the day before, she got a good look at an older man who picked her up. She was pretty surprised because she thought she recognized him.”

Lane turned her eyes from the passing desert. “Did she? Had she seen him before?”

“Yeah, in the newspaper. She went and checked. A few weeks ago, a local businessman got arrested for something and his mug shot was in the paper. Funny name. Started with a G.”

“How extraordinary!” Was this important? Whatever Meg Holden was up to was very likely just a sideshow, and while deplorable or scintillating, depending on your point of view, not relevant to the death of Jack Renwick. She would be interested in what Darling would have to say about it, though—once he got over what she’d just done.

“It just goes to show you that rich people play by different rules,” Raúl commented.

Lane got out of the car in front of the Santa Cruz Inn, thanked Raúl again, and was again rebuffed when she tried to press some money on him. She turned to look at the front of the inn. It was quiet and elegant, basking in the late morning sun. In her anxiety she had half expected to find the place in an uproar, that somehow, impossibly, Galloway would have found out his wife was missing and would be striding about demanding answers, but of course, he could have no idea just yet of how his wife had disappeared, even if he was the assistant chief of police. Or perhaps he didn’t even know yet. She looked at her watch. Much to her amazement, it was just before noon. Lane was famished. She went in search of her husband. She found him by the pool reading The Grapes of Wrath.

“Good book?”

Darling looked up, unsuccessfully trying to hide his relief. “Where the bloody hell have you been?”

Lane, surprised by his vehemence, stopped and looked anxiously at him. “I can’t say. Do you mind awfully?”

Darling swung his legs around to the ground and frowned. “As a matter of fact, I do. I woke up and you were nowhere to be found, and no one at the front desk could tell me where you’d gone.”

“Aren’t you being a little overwrought? I left you a note.”

“Please don’t tell me how overwrought I can be! And you call this a note?” He pulled out the note he’d shoved between the pages of his book. Sorry, darling, I’ve just gone out to help Priscilla. Not sure when I’ll be back. Don’t worry. That ‘don’t worry’ must be the crowning understatement! It’s after noon. I woke up at six in the bloody morning and you were already gone. I was about to call the police.”

Lane stood, dismayed by his anger. It was their first real row as a married couple, and it was, she could see, really her fault. Perhaps she’d been wrong not to include him in the plans, but she’d been concerned about putting him in an awkward position with Galloway. Now she saw the outcome was much worse: she and Darling were in an awkward position with each other. She sat down next to him on the deck chair.

“I wish you wouldn’t just go off like that,” he said. “I understand you’ve been on your own and you’re used to doing whatever you want, and I even understand that it’s probably not fair, as a modern man, for me to expect you to tell me what you’re doing all the time. I just honestly don’t know if I can live like that. The thing is, now that I have more than just myself to think of, I get worried. There, I’ve said it. And